Commentary on Radio & Audio

December 07, 2009

Bound By The Chains Of History

Most of my friends live in the past. Perhaps it’s their age, perhaps they are romanticizing a bygone era — or perhaps they’re right. We must not discount the value of experience. Yet, while experience can anchor us, it can also capsize the ship during a storm of change.

In Glimmer, Warren Berger’s new book about design, collaborator Bruce Mau discusses the reinvention of entire industries and businesses through experience design. Mau believes that true innovation is rarely accomplished from the inside out. For example, MP3 players had been around for several years when Apple made the iPod a phenomenon by bringing in outsiders to reinvent the consumer experience.

Mau says people on the inside, no matter how innovative or proactive we think we are, tend to worship elements of the past, bowing to them like golden calves. We may have breakthrough moments, but we talk ourselves out of changing because of an idea’s historical importance.

In radio, for instance, we cling to the standard 30- or 60-second ad format. Why? Because we run our stopsets at the same times. Why? The stopset clock used by most radio stations today was based on an Arbitron TV ratings clock from the 1950s. That became the quarter-hour measurement, and we stopped in those traditional places because running ads within five minutes on either side of the quarter-hours would penalize our quarter-hour shares. We can throw all that out the window in a PPM world. How many stations in PPM markets are stopping at the same times they used to? All of them.This week I hold my Forecast conference, an annual gathering of radio executives. Some will talk of change, as they have for the last few years, but few will report that they have actually made any significant changes. Some will say what we are doing is working well while reporting another down quarter. Perhaps they are right — but how will we know unless we experiment?

What if a radio company, or the industry as a whole, brought in an outsider to reinvent the radio experience from the outside in? What would happen? How would radio change? Chances are it wouldn’t; we would ignore the outsider’s recommendations because they "don’t understand radio."

But those wacky ideas might work. We pooh-poohed streaming, but Pandora, a webcaster that some say doesn’t understand how radio programming should be done, has amassed an audience of millions. Radio continues to discount it, which probably makes Pandora CEO Joe Kennedy very happy as he flies under the radar to steal our audiences. Although he has yet to effectively monetize the service, eventually something will work.We all live in the past to some degree, because the past has proven successes. For example, I’m a big believer in the basics of community and local personality to facilitate an unfair share of the market. It’s proven itself time and again. But how realistic is it that debt-burdened companies will reinvest when survival is on their minds every moment of every day? How likely is it that one company will hire an outsider to reinvent and experiment with even a single station?

Perhaps it’s time. You cannot create change when bound by the chains of history.

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The ability and willingness to envision and implement change is not a function of age - it is a behavior that cannot be learned or unlearned. People of all ages suffer from the fear of letting go of the the past, but not all people possess this affliction.

Find people for your organization who passionately embrace change and have no fear of respectfully tossing out the past.

The only chains that broadcaster have are the shackles of debt & fear. I agree with all of this Erik and would enjoy seeing your voice provoke some bravery among us.

All of this POD technology is still designed to connect to humans with ears. Since there is no shortage of ears and absolutely no shortage of content, our medium should embrace the concept of "media-casting" with its third tier market signals.

With the exception of the strong radio brands per cluster, what is the industry really attempting to protect? Think about it. Signal, C, D & E with little to no BCF and next to zero PPM, should be were we shine with what's "next"....

At the end of the day, one single FM station in a decent sized market can capture the imagination of listenerhood with the flick of a few switches.

All it would take is one brave market manager in one market to make the move. Or, one brave funding source to gobble these tier assets and build a media monster.